About Me
Hello, welcome to my story. I’ve been a fitness enthusiast my entire life. I was born in Cleveland, OH. I did my first athletic competition in fourth grade. Ran track and pole vault through High School. In 1982 I bought my first mountain bike and started a decades long passion that continues to this day.
Food and diet was never on my radar until I noticed my labs heading in a bad direction. My cholesterol ratios were in the danger zone and blood pressure increasing. Nothing was critical but the trend was ominous. I experimented with different types of diets such as Paleo. Nothing changed. I had been exercising and eating what I thought was “healthy”, but admit I was a snacker and regularly indulged in various bags of chips and such. My weight was not a problem and with routine exercise had convinced myself that exercise could overcome snacks. That is until my labs continued to worsen; elevated cholesterol, increasing blood pressure, increasing fasting blood sugar. Metabolic syndrome was knocking at my door.
Hmm, here I am a age 61 looking at possibly three medications to start, and forever? That didn’t seem like a long term solution. Would I keep adding more as I aged? Is that really the key to living a healthy life, more medication? I didn’t believe I had a medication deficiency, but didn’t really understand what to do. The internet must have the answer. And it did, every answer to every question in a jumbled symphony of opposites! Eat meat, don’t eat meat, vegatables, no vegetables, never eat fruit, always eat fruit. It’s a total mess out there in the dietsphere. It seems anyone could find someone who says to eat what they want to eat and claim it’s the one “true” diet. There just has to be an answer I thought. And if I’m having this much trouble, a medical doctor, how are people without any medical background supposed to know what to eat?
A large part of my medical training is in research. I have written many papers and collaborated with many wonderful and amazing physicians and scientists. One of the most important aspects of doing new research is discovering what the old research really means. It’s not just reading what the authors say about their research, it is also critically evaluating their presented data and making and independent opinion about it. I have formal training in this area and have used this skill extensively in the field of glaucoma and ophthalmology, so why not turn it towards nutrition? Turn it I did. I eventually found the works of Dr. Robert Lustig. Some of his works are listed in my Library section if you are interested in diving deeper. Dr. Lustig helped crack the sugar code that led to a long list of other authors, especially Dr. Steven Gundry. Many of these author’s ideas became the foundation for the major changes I made to my eating and entire lifestyle. I’m a “dive in” kind of guy so I just changed my food. It took about a full month to convert over to this new what and way of eating. I’ve had to reorganize my thinking about certain foods, bid farewell to some items I knew as food but are not, and say hello to all new foods previously not even considered. After six months on the new plan, my life was changed. My labs retested better than my original labs in first year of medical school! (and yes I’m that much of a geek that I saved the results). My blood pressure, fasting sugar, cholesterol all excellent. In addition, I had been diagnosed with urticaria (an inflammation in the skin) several years ago. It’s no longer active. Dry eye that I’ve had for decades, resolved. I feel better, sleep better, started building muscle and riding my bike stronger. This is a miracle. I have to spread the word.
And so was born… Human Nutrition by Dr. Dan